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Grayer & Nurse: Holdovers, or pay the buyout?

I like Jeff Grayer, and I didn't want to see him hired by GMac for just this reason. He's now a lame duck assistant for a coach who most likely won't take him along to the new job in Omaha. Nick Nurse has a good track record of coaching in Europe and a couple of years of coaching in the NBA D-league, but it always seemed like this was a "GMac hire" rather than an "ISU hire". He had close personal ties to our former head coach, so will he still even want to coach at ISU for an undetermined boss? I don't know.

What I don't want to see is Jamie dictating to whoever he offers this job to that "we NEED you to hire these two assistants". Dictating who a head coach will hire as his assistants is standard practice....if your name is Jerry Jones and YOU OWN THE TEAM. Otherwise, its a case of the AD preemptively emasculating his coaching hire. After all, if an AD can dictate who your assistants are, shouldn't he also have a say in what system you run? And how about playing time decisions? Recruiting priorities? No, unless Jamie is wanting to hire a lapdog and make all the decisions behind the scenes himself, then he needs to hire someone who wants to run HIS program HIS way.

I don't necessarily think that this will be the end of Grayer's chances to work at ISU. Jeff's been wanting a job on our staff for a long time, and I think it would be easier to sell to a new coach that Jeff isn't necessarily a holdover from the GMac staff, more of a "legacy" hire that the AD forced GMac into making. Plus, I would think that Jeff would not be insulted if he were asked to interview for the job again. Not much chance that he will be anyone's top assistant, but he could be a very serviceable assistant who loves ISU and could grow into the job.

Now will Nick Nurse get that same sort of consideration? I have no idea. I know that there are a lot of people thinking that we should offer the job to Nick in order to have a new coach in place by tomorrow night. I'm not adverse to him being in consideration for the job, but I would hope that Jamie would at least consider a couple of other options before he makes this hire. Especially since I think that the hiring of Nurse was most likely a GMac decision that Jamie had no input into.

Re: Grayer & Nurse: Holdovers, or pay the buyout?

Will Nurse head to Creighton with Greg?

If the next coach doesnt want Grayer, can we find him a spot elsewhere in the department? Seems like he's been fine doing other stuff non-coaching related the last couple years, maybe we could find a fit for him.

Re: Grayer & Nurse: Holdovers, or pay the buyout?

I believe Nurse will go with Greg to Creighton - much better job security than he would have in Ames. It's hard to tell with Grayer, he may or may not end up here. His new position doesn't start until mid May, so hard to tell.

Re: Grayer & Nurse: Holdovers, or pay the buyout?

I remember when we hired Ed Banach to counsel student athletes back in the mid 80's. Yeah, he WAS a Hawkeye, but he was INTENSE and really seemed like a bulldog when it came to advocating for his charges. Maybe we could work something like this out for Jeff if the coaching assistant job didn't work out. It wouldn't be a bad move; having Jeff Grayer contributing to ISU sports seems like a real win-win-win for the athletes, the athletic department, and the fans.

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